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easterncalculus | on: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents
And also expand the city line for what "Austin" is so you can include the cheaper, far from everything housing that you refuse to build.

Yes, it does need to be affordable, and a certain percentage of it needs to be non-market housing. Housing isn't an elastic commodity. Get real.

pclowes | parent
But where do you draw the limit on moving the line in?

Do I get to demand affordable housing overlooking Central Park in NYC? Beachside in Malibu?

If you want large incentive for development at scale you need to allow developers to make fat margins or else you wont get too many of them. Yes you can use affordable housing to do that. Eg: in the article they got higher density and exceptions (aka “fat stacks”) for building affordable housing units.

This is all policy tradeoffs at the end of the day. Eg: a tent is not “housing”, why? Because of reasonable policy. Same thing with housing codes etc. All directionally wise/good. But at the same time you can have bad affordable housing policy.

I do think housing is elastic and a cities policies around that elasticity determines if they will thrive or stagnate.